


I want our journey to be full of laughter.

by goldenheadfreckledheart



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Post S2, Post-Canon, another clarke returns fic, fluffy FFX inspired fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 22:14:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3953701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenheadfreckledheart/pseuds/goldenheadfreckledheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laughter cures all things. And when you can't muster real laughter, faking it might just do the trick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I want our journey to be full of laughter.

**Author's Note:**

> Alright so I’m a huge fucking nerd for Final Fantasy X, and if you’ve ever played it, you no doubt have the infamous “laughing scene” burned into your brain. And dear god the dubbing is horrible, but you can’t deny that it’s adorable. So naturally I had to write it for bellarke, because have you met me?
> 
> (If you want to watch the scene, literally just search “FFX laughing scene” on youtube. Title is from that scene as well.)
> 
> Aka, another Clarke returns fic, cause why the frick not.

It’s been four months when Clarke finally returns, and while her arrival is met with shouts and hugs and celebration, it’s largely uneventful. She’s back where she belongs and fits in again, easily. Not quite like she never left, but better than she dared to hope.

Her reunion with her friends is quiet but emotional; a long hug from Monty, a bone crushing one from Raven, an accepting nod from Jasper that almost breaks her heart, and a warm handshake from Octavia that has her on the verge of happy tears.

Her reunion with Bellamy, too, is a quiet thing. It’s a quick hug, a brief meeting of eyes that says all there is to say.

And with that, it’s back to business as normal--as normal as things can be after all that’s happened.

Three weeks into her return, Bellamy’s sure that he’s the only one who knows how she often leaves camp in the middle of the night.

The first time he sees her go, he’s on watch and he nearly has a heart attack watching her slip through Raven’s gate. Because  _she can’t leave again._

She doesn’t go far though, remaining within fifty feet of the fence.

Mostly she just stands there, staring up at the stars. Some nights she sits instead. One night he thinks he’s lost sight of her before he realizes that she’s just laying back, hair spread across the patches of dirt and grass.

As time goes on, she moves farther from camp, but never out of sight.

It’s not until he covers Miller’s shift one night and doesn’t see her at all that he realizes she only goes out when she knows he’s on watch. Whether that’s for the benefit of his sanity or hers, he’s not sure. Either way, it’s comforting.

It’s that comfort that keeps him from going after her when she finally wanders out of sight one night. She continues to do so in the following nights, always returning before the itch to go after her overrides his trust and knowledge that  _she needs the space_.

When he hears her shout into the dark one windswept night, his knuckles go white around his rifle, but still he doesn’t go after her. Her yell is a frustrated one, not the kind belonging to someone being mauled by a rogue gorilla, or a stray grounder. So he stays. When she finally returns, he swears he sees her turn toward the guard station, an apologetic look on her face, before slipping back through Raven’s gate.

And so the pattern continues. She doesn’t always yell, but those nights are the worst, because he knows exactly how she feels, because he definitely did the same thing in the weeks following Mount Weather. He remembers the need to vent his frustration, at himself, at the world, somehow. Shouting seemed like as good a choice as any.

He doesn’t mention it until they both go out on a scouting trip for herbs and seaweed.

Earlier in the day he sees her storming from her mother’s tent, nearly bowling over Harper in the process. When her hand shoots up when Kane asks for volunteers for the outing, he raises his as well. He was planning on going anyway, but the tension in her shoulders makes him want to keep an eye on her.

When they get to the river he sits down next to her on an outcropping of rocks that hangs over the water. Wordlessly, he pulls a length of the weed from the pile at her feet and begins pulling the leaves from the stalk, placing him the mesh bag between them.

“You look sad,” he says. It’s an understatement and he knows it.

She hums in response, doesn’t pause her work. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Wanna scream?” he doesn’t look at her when he asks, but there’s a slight smile on his face when he sees her jerk her head toward him, staring in shock. Like she’s not actually sure he just brought up her late night excursions.

After a minute the shock fades into a soft look and she turns back to the herbs. “I don’t really think that’s going to help in the long run.”

He knows what’s running through her mind, because it’s running through his too: the guilt and terror of what they’ve done is ever present.

He admires her. He does. Because even though she spends her nights outside the confining walls of camp, still she’s back. She’s here. And he knows she’s still hurting, but she’s trying.

The idea he has then is stupid, ridiculous, but if it’ll help cheer up this girl who, on the most basic of levels, is his best friend in the world, then he’s definitely willing to be a little ridiculous.

“This is kind of embarrassing to admit,” he starts, and she looks up at him. He doesn’t meet her eyes, because, really, he _is_  somewhat embarrassed about this.

“You and I,” he goes on, “We mean something to them.” He throws a look back over his shoulder to where Monty and Monroe are working on a length of seaweed. He knows that she’ll understand what he means. They mean something to their people. It’s something he’s realized while she was gone. And it’s incredibly humbling, but also very strange.

“Beyond just being leaders I mean. We’re like…” this isn’t as easy to explain as he had thought, “I don’t know, like a ray of hope, maybe.” He ducks his head, because it sounds  _stupid_  and a little self-important, but he can’t deny that it’s true.

She doesn’t say anything, so he keeps going. “When you were gone, I learned to practice smiling,” his voice goes very quiet, “when it all felt like too much.”

She’s deathly quiet, and he hopes she knows this isn’t a ploy to get her to apologize for leaving. He’s relieved when she says, after a moment, “Yeah. I understand.”

He pushes his shoulders back, “Alright then.” His voice is suddenly brighter, “Let’s see what you can do.”

She looks at him in confusion, brows furrowed together. In response, he just smiles at her, wide and happy (and really, he doesn’t need to practice smiles anymore, not now that she’s back). He thinks maybe she stops breathing for a minute before she finally looks up at him, a small, careful smile at her lips.

It’s not much, but it’s there, and warmth blossoms in his chest.

“This is…weird,” she says after a second, but her smile grows.

“Alright, now try laughing out loud.”

“What?” The look on her face tells him she thinks he’s insane.

But he’s not going to be deterred, so he puts on his best teasing grin and says, “Come on, show me,” raising a challenging eyebrow.

When he sees the fire spark in her eyes a second later, he fights the urge to laugh. Because  _of course_  the best way to get Clarke to do something she doesn’t want to do is to turn it into a challenge.

“Ha,” she says, voice monotonous but firm, “Ha ha ha.”

She looks over at him as if to say,  _happy now?_

He just looks back expectantly,  _really, that’s all you’ve got?_

She narrows her eyes at him then turns back to face the river. He watches her brace her shoulders and take a deep breath.

“A HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.” To her credit, she doesn’t hold back this time. It’s certainly not real laughter, but it’s loud and bellowing, and honestly,  _horrible_  to listen to. But she’s trying, and he’s happy.

He’s kind of thrown when she doesn’t stop there.

“HA HA HA HA HA HA,” she stops only to breathe, her eyes squeezed shut. “HA HA HA, A HA HA HA HA HA.”

He knows she’s attracting looks now, but that’s not what bothers him. What gets to him is the pain that permeates each syllable of her loud laughter.

“Maybe you should,” he says quietly, when she stops to breathe, “stop laughing now.”

He knows from the set of her shoulders that his suggestion is going to be be ignored.

She keeps going, voice rough but strong. And he might be imagining it, but this round of laughter seems slightly less pain-filled, so maybe it wasn’t such a ridiculous idea after all.

When she stops for air again he takes his own deep breath in tandem with hers and she notices, glancing briefly over at him, her mouth forming the smallest of smiles when she realizes what he’s doing.

“HA HA HA HA HA HA HA,” they all but shout in unison, their voices ringing through the clearing. It’s a good thing they’re on good terms with the grounders, he thinks, because something like this might just be asking for an ambush. “A HA HA HA HA HA.”

She peeks over at him when they stop, chest heaving, and all at once they collapse into  _real_  laughter, gasping for breath, shoulders shaking.

It takes them long minutes to recover and Bellamy knows that this is the lightest he’s felt in  _months,_ and it has everything to do with the woman seated beside him.

“This is too ridiculous,” he says through the laughter.

“It was your idea!” She smiles up at him, bright and teasing as she pushes an errant strand of hair out of her face, before falling back into soft laughter. She lets her head fall to his shoulder as she catches her breath.

It’s oddly quiet then and Bellamy casts a look over his shoulder to find Monty and Monroe staring at them, matching expressions of concern on their faces.

“What?” he asks them, teasing rather than angry, although that might be more jarring than anger: The number of times Bellamy’s been known to be teasing in the last few months could be counted on one hand.

“We were just worried you guys might have gone crazy,” Monty says eventually, smiling slowly at the co-leaders.

“Right, well,” Clarke says, a faint tinge at her cheeks, “let’s finish this up so we can get back to camp.”

The four friends exchange tentative grins, and maybe, just maybe, things are a bit closer to normal than they were before.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it! Leave me your comments/critiques and come cry with me on tumblr, if you'd like. (goldenheadfreckledheart.tumblr.com)


End file.
